Worn straw hat on his head and sturdy black boots on his feet, he weaves among the pines on his Christmas tree farm in Buena Park.

It’s his favorite time of the day. Peaceful.

“It’s almost like you’re talking to God,” Tidwell says, breathing in the fresh green smell of robust trees nearly as perfectly shaped as the power lines that tower nearby.

He’s not the kind of guy to talk or sing to his trees. Still, they are alive to him.

“When I’m walking through the fields, it’s just like I’m among friends, good friends,” he says in a folksy drawl.

“I do get lost in my mind thinking about things as I work the trees. Not just about trees, about putting life in perspective.”

At the end of this Christmas season, the trees left standing at Western Pines tree farm will whisper back something neither Tidwell nor his customers want to hear.

Terry Bommer and his family drive the 25 miles or so from Manhattan Beach every year the day after Thanksgiving to find, saw by hand, and haul away a tall tree.

Bommer says the trip to Western Pines is a “grand tradition” that started when the oldest of his four children, Bryce, was 2. He’s now 21, and drove down from Santa Barbara during his school break to join his family in picking out a 14-footer this year.

Bommer was looking for something better than buying a tree at a parking lot.

“Kids in the city don’t ever get to see pine trees unless you go up into the mountains on occasion. You wander through here and in some areas in the trees, you can’t see the neighbors or the surrounding things.”

That’s the way Tidwell grew up, on a dairy farm in Sanger, Texas, a town he describes as a blinking light between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

The Marine Corps brought him to California. He went to Vietnam in 1968, where, he says, “I got blowed up.” After a convalescence, he finished his tour of duty and came to Orange County.

Tidwell took over Western Pines in 1985 on the suggestion of then-owner and horticulture student George “Trey” Reish III, who bought property in Sun City to start a larger farm than the 31/2-acre lot.

It’s not just the trees that kept Tidwell going, but the people who visit Western Pines to take one home. He doesn’t call them customers. He calls them friends.

That’s the way he introduces Cira Oropeza, who first came to Western Pines 30 years ago with her mother when she was 7. They lived a few blocks over in Buena Park. Now Oropeza lives in Cerritos with her daughter, Sarina, 11.

She came back one more time a few days ago.

To say goodbye.

Western Pines, just a roller-coaster scream away from Knott’s Berry Farm, is closing after 31 years of operation on a lot leased from Southern California Edison.

Three years ago, Tidwell says, Edison told him to stop planting trees, that his year-to-year lease would end. There’s no new crop coming, and it takes three years for the trees to be ready to cut.

These are the last 1,200 or so native California Monterey pines that grow 4 to 12 feet high and sell for $9 to $100.

Edison has phased out tree farms from its property over the years, typically converting the land to storage facilities, says spokesman Tom Boyd.

“It’s essentially our effort to get the best return on our investment, on behalf of our customers,” Boyd explains.

Only two Christmas tree farms remain on Edison property in Orange County – Western Pines and one other a few blocks away in Buena Park.

Bommer wishes Edison saw the forest for the trees.

“Maybe Edison will see this story and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s leave that tree lot.’ The probability of that is less than 1 percent, but one can hope.”

Orange County once boasted 15 to 20 Christmas tree farms in the choose-and- cut heyday of the 1970s and ’80s, but that’s now down to a half-dozen, says Charles Peltzer of the Orange County Farm Bureau executive board, who operates four of those tree farms himself.

The cost of land and water and the competition for labor have trimmed the tree farms.

Tidwell says he understands the economics and isn’t bitter at Edison.

“They’ve been great to me, letting me go another year or two after they told me not to plant anymore,” he says of his $6,000-a-year lease. “I’d really love to find another piece of land, but that’s hard to do in Orange County.”

Tidwell doesn’t rely on the tree farm for his livelihood. He’s the manager of public- works operations in the county’s Resources and Development Management Department. He has also taught horticulture and environment classes for 26 years at Saddleback College, and just started a class at Rancho Santiago College for people who want to take care of trees.

He takes vacation time to be at Western Pines during the Christmas season. He’d come after work or on the weekends the rest of the year to water, prune and weed with the help of his boys, 24, 21 and 13.

The boys always helped Oropeza and her mother get their tree home. Oropeza says she couldn’t help but vent the other day with a customer-service rep at Edison.

“To me, it’s a landmark. I was just taking my frustrations out.”

Sarina sucks on one of the candy canes Tidwell gives to the kids who come to Western Pines as she and her mom, with their dog, Blue, look for just the right tree – “not too tall and not too small – that feels like Christmas.”

They choose a 6-footer at the back of the lot, and Oropeza writes a check for $50.

“So this is the last year?” Sarina asks. “That’s a bummer.”

“Well, it is,” Tidwell agrees. “But you know what the biggest bummer about it is? I won’t get to see you next year.”

Theresa Walker is a Southern California native who has been a staff writer at The Orange County Register since 1992. She specializes in human interest stories and social issues, such as homelessness. She also covers nonprofits and philanthropy in Orange County. She loves telling stories about ordinary people who do the extraordinary in their communities.

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